(1)
Come, then! I will tell you. Listen to my story, and retain it:
These are the only ways of investigation that can be thought of:
The one, that it is and cannot not-be,
this is the path of persuasion (for it follows Truth).
The other, that it is not and is destined not to be,
that path, I say, is wholly unintelligible.
For you cannot know what is not—it cannot be done—
nor indicate it in speech. [2]

(2)
What is said and what is thought has got to be; for what is is,
but no thing is not. This is what I ask you to think through.
For the latter is the first way of investigation from which I bar you,
and also from that way on which mortals, know-nothings,
wander two-headed...
who think to be and not to be are the same
and not the same, and that the path is one that turns back on itself. [6]

(3)
There remains a single way to speak of:
That it is. And along this way there are signs
in great number, that what is is (A) ungenerated and undestroyed,
(B) whole, unique and (C) unmoved and complete.
Neither was it at some time, nor will it be, since it is, now, altogether,
one and continuous.

(A) For what birth will you seek for it?
How, from what source, could it have grown? I will not let you say or think
it came "from what is not." For "what is not" cannot
be said or thought. And what need could have aroused it,
later or earlier, to grow if it began from nothing?
Thus it must either be fully—all the way—or not at all.
Nor will the force of persuasion permit, from what is not,
something other than it to come to be...
The decision thus amounts to this:
Either it is or it is not. But by that it is necessarily settled:
The latter must be left alone, unthinkable and unnameable...
while the former stays put and is genuine and real.
Thus how could what is have ceased to be? How could it have come to be?
For if it came to be, then it is not,nor is it if it is sometime going to be.
Thus coming-to-be is extinguished, and ceasing-to-be is out of the question.

(B) Nor is it divided, since it isall alike,
nor is anything more here than there...
nor is anything weaker or stronger, but all is full of what is.

(C) But motionless in the limits of mighty bonds
it is beginningless, endless, since coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be
have been flung far off; true conviction has banished them.
Abiding the same in the same, it rests, independent in itself,
and remains there, unshaken. For mighty necessity
holds it in the bonds of the limit, restraining it on all sides,
because it is unlawful for what is to be unfinished,
since it does not lack anything; but if it were not, it would lack everything.

(4)
Thought and that because of which there is thought are the same,
for without what is, in relation to which it [=thought] occurs,
thought cannot exist.
For nothing is or will be
other than what is, since fate has fettered it
whole, motionless, to be. So all these things are mere names
that mortals have laid down, persuaded that they are true:
"coming-to-be" and "ceasing-to-be" and "being-and-not-being"
and "change of place" and "variation of bright color."
But since there is an outermost limit, it is completed
from every side, like the mass of a well-rounded sphere,
equally balanced in every direction from the center...
For what is not does not exist to stop it from reaching
itself, nor can what is be more this way
and less that way than what is, since it all is, inviolable.
For it is equal to itself from every side, uniformly meeting its own limits. [8,34f.]